Reisestationen der Morus Nemini
Port Wander Port Wander is a void station on the uttermost edge of the Drusus Marches of the Calixis Sector, rightly regarded as the last bastion of the rule of the Emperor this side of the Koronus Expanse. A place of desperate hopes and vain dreams; Port Wander teems with a transitory population of traders, spies, merchant factors, pilgrims, and missionaries amongst which move Administratum functionaries and minions of the Mechanicus, all feeding on the riches that flow from the realms beyond the warp storms in the Koronus Expanse. All who travel into the Koronus Expanse share one common experience in that they pass Port Wander. Be they the pious bringing the Emperor’s Light into the darkness beyond the Imperium or black-hearted monsters searching for the keys to forbidden dreams, many will stop in the last place where the rule of the Golden Throne keeps the horror and possibility of the unknown at bay. Port Wander was founded by the Imperial Navy in 917. M40 as a staging ground to investigate the loss of many vessels on the fringes of the Drusus Marches. With the discovery of the Koronus Passage in the late 40th millennium, the station grew in importance owing to its close proximity to the Passage. Its original role as a base for military operations was slowly forgotten, and Port Wander became a way station for those daring passage into the Koronus Expanse. Merchants and mercenaries began to choke the once- deserted corridors of the station, and strangers shook the dust of distant stars from their boots while trading wondrous things from beyond the Great Warp Storms. From a distance, the port resembles a small cityscape, with spires and cathedral towers arching upwards and a huge aquila marking its allegiance to the God-Emperor. Numerous long piers protrude from the sides with spider-like docking fixtures, ready to bring in a ship and anchor it to the station. Smaller shuttle bays dot the station where numerous small craft carry cargo and people between ships and the station. Deep crevasses run along the station, showing the slow layers of expansions through the many decades and the somewhat patchwork nature of many of them which includes parts from small vessels such as the nearly intact hull of the Solstice Imperialis, grafted onto one side of the station many centuries ago. Further construction and external maintenance is constant, with servitors crawling over areas of damage or expansion like flies over a bloated metal beast. On the underside of the station are the main repair yards, where damaged ships can contract out for refurbishment and mending. The yards include entire sealed dry-dock bays, where smaller ships can be totally enclosed for more intensive work. Also along the station’s keel are a variety of elaborate and mysterious arrays and probes used by the Adeptus Mechanicus in their arcane research into the nature of the warp passage leading through the Great Warp Storms to the Koronus Expanse beyond. Across the length and breadth of the station are lance emplacements, weapons batteries, torpedo launchers, and void shield generators, all placed for maximum efficiency and kept in readiness. In addition to these static defences, squadrons of heavily armed monitor craft are stationed near Port Wander, and warships from Battlefleet Calixis pass the port on regular patrol. Port Wander may be the gate to the Koronus Expanse but it is a gate that is guarded. At any given time there are at least a half-dozen Rogue Traders docked at the station, as well as other merchant vessels, enormous transports, and numerous smaller craft moving into and out of docking stations like swarming insects. Other vessels move through the area, offloading raw fuel gases mined from the two larger planets or minerals and ice from the further reaches of the system. There are also numerous asteroids sharing its space, most of which have been turned into fuel depots, palatial manses and estates, crude habitats, storage facilities, ship yards, and other more useful installations. Der Schlund (The Maw) “It is a beast that swallows the apostate, the doubter, and all who ship with them. Better to slay the unfaithful than risk the dread Maw whilst such false wretches draw breath.” –Opening lines of the Voidfarer’s Warning from the Drusian Play The Koronus Passage is a stable but dangerous warp route that passes through the Great Warp Storms separating the Calixis Sector from the Koronus Expanse. The Koronus Passage was discovered by a Magos-Explorator of the Machine Cult in the distant past, lost for millennia, and found once more by the Rogue Trader Purity Lathimon at the very close of the 40th Millennium. The Passage links Port Wander and the Drusus Marches to the great star Furibundus and the void colony of Footfall—and beyond Footfall, the Koronus Expanse beckons. Superstitious voidfarers call the route “the Maw.” To their eyes the Maw is a beast made of warp storms, cunning and malicious, whose crushing gullet must be braved by those who seek to break through to the Koronus Expanse beyond. Many have died in trying, and traversing the Maw remains harrowing despite centuries of experience gathered by Navigators and Rogue Traders. Some say this ill-omened title came from the first to survive the crossing—andthat they returned wild-eyed, at the edge of sanity, and few journeyed to the voids again. The possibilities of a passage through the Great Warp Storms were first recorded by Abenicus, insane Navigator of House Benetek, and have gripped the hearts and minds of Rogue Traders ever since that time. Vast riches and a way through the Great Warp Storms were once a lure to the brave and foolhardy, and many died for pursuing what they believed to be the truth. In time, cautious steps into what would be called the Mawlaid the groundwork for the Stations of Passage that guided steps of those passing through the Maw. Later, during the Mistaken Age of the early 41st Millennium, Navigators learned to read the Maw and its moods—to see signs in the warp for what they were and so avoid the sudden, sweeping maelstroms that doomed earlier explorers. The Stations of Passage fell into disuse, save as refuges from unexpected upheaval in the empyrean, and as covert rendezvous points for plotting Rogue Traders. In the present times the Maw is a rite of passage for Rogue Traders of the Calixis Sector. A Lord-Captain may bear the greatest Warrant of Trade ever seen in Port Wander, but until he harrows the Maw and survives to see the raging light of Furibundus at its farthest end, he is no better than a common Free Trader in the eyes of his peers. Das Schlachtfeld Legend has it that the Battleground was an ancient wreckage field even before the Rogue Traders Trame and Ettimus Lathimon fought here to mutual destruction over the Ragged Worlds. A vast span of debris swirls slowly under dim starlight, most of it Imperial, spread across the empty void. Every crew has a dozen tales as to what happened here long before Rogue Traders traversed the Maw. Aufbruch (Footfall) “You sir are a liar, and while you may command a flotilla of warships, the fact is that right here and right now there is just you and me and this hammer. So, let us hear no more of what you do not know and proceed to what you do know.“ – Doronal Casius, “Prince” of the Kasballica, in conversation with Rogue Trader Hiram Sult The settlement that was once Dewain’s Footfall, and now simply Footfall, is a tethered network of hundreds of stone structures floating in Furibundus’s voids. It is a mass of buttressed temples and plasma-pitted fanes whose towers jut out at all angles into the void. Most are linked by enclosed stonework tunnels and arch-bridges, in addition to huge steel chains. At the very centre is tethered a huge macro-statue of the God-Emperor, larger than many warships. Many of Footfall’s buildings would not look out of place upon a planetary surface, while other spiral mazes and winding tunnels of unsupported stone would fall apart under the tug of gravity. Sections of Footfall have no gravity, and many have fluctuating levels of generated gravity. The few structures that have their own stable grav generators are highly desired prizes and are fought over by the most powerful factions, changing hands over the corpses and regrets of their prior occupants with alarming regularity. Over the centuries since its establishment, Footfall has become a lair of villainy and intrigue, the descendants of its original population of stoneworkers and Rogue Trader vassals now far outnumbered by less-reputable newcomers. Here, religious fanatics rub shoulders with assassins, spies, fugitives from Imperial justice, narco-tribesmen, rowdy crew on furlough, and a wide range of disreputable merchants. Beneath this tumult of lawlessness can be found and an even more shadowy world: hereteks, cultists, unrestrained criminals, unsanctioned psykers, and worse. Here a thousand forms of deadly intrigue can be found, and anything from a starship to a human soul can be bartered in Footfall—for a price. It is for precisely these reasons that many great powers and factions from the Calixis Sector maintain secretive agents in Footfall: the Administratum, Battlefleet Calixis, the Great Houses of the Imperial Nobility, the disciples of the Dark Gods, the Ministorum... and perhaps even the Holy Ordos of the Inquisition as well. For the Rogue Traders and their agents, Footfall has many uses beyond those of a simple port. These individuals come to learn about competing interests, find an array of illegal services unavailable on Imperial worlds, send forth trusted crew to carouse, gather new recruits to replace those lost to the void, and participate in deadly intrigues to gain an edge in the exploration of the Koronus Expanse. It is also a place where a vessel can shelter to refit and repair damage in relative safety, provided a Rogue Trader can abide the thousand assorted scum who might flock about, or the dubious strangers who will swarm their injured vessel and toil upon its hull for a few thrones apiece—or the hereteks whose price is far higher but whose “no questions asked” expertise makes them worth the daemon’s bargain to hire.